Father, Forgive Them

Despite the brutality and heartlessness documented by the daily newspaper, K Geetanjali takes comfort in the conclusion that people are only unconscious, and not inherently evil.

- K Geetanjali

As I closed the newspaper this morning I felt shocked and a little depressed. I had just read how two medical students in Tamil Nadu had tortured a monkey before killing and burying it. A few days before, the newspapers had carried the story of a few other medical students throwing a dog from a roof top. “Where have we humans gone so hopelessly wrong that people in a profession supposed to personify compassion, are committing such heinous crimes? Why do people do the things they do?", I wondered.

When 'healers' turn predators, what hope is there?

Isn’t this the byproduct of selling medical seats? When money rules the roost and determines your career path instead of the heart making the decision out of the soul’s calling, this is what the world will reflect. The projections of a distorted mind.

However, if you give the matter some thought, you will realise that most people are not bad or evil, just unconscious. They are not out to harm others, just trying to find some happiness. Living in an illusory world, they define happiness through the distorted lens of a highly unconscious mind. The examples I have mentioned above are extreme cases of distorted minds that derive joy from the suffering of others. But living in an unconscious manner where we cannot see beyond our own needs, is more common than we think.

While returning home from a PTM (Parent-Teacher Meeting) a few days back, my colleague was ranting about an unreasonable parent who had given her a hard time.

“The parent knew I had had a long hard day which included teaching sessions in the morning and meeting parents in the afternoon. One would expect a human being to empathise with another human,” she ranted. “Instead she kept badgering me about her child, totally oblivious to my feelings!”